further information on previous 802.11 thread? (update)

[clug at repose.cx]

Mark Purcell <msp at purcell.homeip.net> writes:


> Fire away, but the best source I found was the Linux Wireless Howto which
> gave great details on card compatibility and which drivers work with which
> cards. http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/

Thanks for that link.

>> 1. I'd like to use two cards, and avoid the base station, as I really don't
>>    want to incure the extra expense. I seem to recall that doing this is when
>>    the cards are placed in "ad-hoc" mode, but there's this small piece of
>>    information floating around in my head that says that you require
>>    new/particular cards to do this nicely without a base station. Am I
>>    imagining things? Can base-station-less operation be done fine with no
>>    consideration as to the type of card? I just remember reading somewhere
>>    about a "better" way to do it, or something. Maybe it was making one of the
>>    cards act like an access point?
>
> I have my cards both running in adhoc mode without problem.  But then again
> your mileage can vary depending on the cards.  But generally if a card
> supports the Linux wireless extenions you should be able to run ad-hoc
> mode. Aparently some guy has got developed some software to allow you
> to run a Prism2 based card as a base station!  I don't have Prism2 cards so
> didn't get any further...
>
> It's called hostap http://people.ssh.com/jkm/Prism2/

Ahh! This is the thing that had been bumping around in my head. I did a bit of
surfing today, and came across a Wiki with a table of receiver sensitivies,
which makes for interesting reading:

http://freenetworks.org/moin/index.cgi/ReceiveSensitivity

Currently I think the d-link DWL-650 is looking very attractive. It's third
highest in the 11Mbits range, and about forth in the 1mbits range.  Harris
Technology also sell it:
http://www.ht.com.au/Scripts/xworks.exe?LDESC:A9247#Tof for about $159 - which
is considerably cheaper than most of the other cards available. While a card
like this: Lucent Orinoco / Compaq WL110 (32mW) is about 3db more sensitive and
thus could operate adequately on about half the signal stregth, it's also about
twice as expensive! And for the higher datarates, the sensitivities are much
closer to each other.

The DWL-650 cards also appear to be supported in Linux. Anyone on the list a
happy owner?

-- 
Damien Elmes